Why am I a Mac user?

For most of my life, I viewed Macs with great disdain. They had little software, and I just didn’t see them as particularly useful as a developer. My first experiences with computers were all with Unix machines — and I loved them. The ability to program them with built-in tools as well as their stability meant they were all around great machines. But as a home user, I didn’t have the luxury of a Unix Sparc machine. Like most home users, I was forced to use Windows and grew accustomed to the issues they always have — registry problems, boot problems, driver problems, on and on the list goes. After a while, I got tired of the endless problems with my Windows machine and, when Linux became a viable option, I switched my home computer to RedHat. I got the stability I wanted, and substantially fewer problems than my Windows computers presented. But, there has always been one big problem with Linux – it doesn’t always have the software you want. For example, you can’t run Photoshop on Linux. When I started doing iOS development at work a couple years ago, I had to use a Mac, and I fell in love immediately. The stability of Linux as well as most of the same command line utilities, shell scripting, and the addition of an excellent graphical interface made for an amazing user experience. Even better, most of the software I want to use is available on my Mac – the Adobe Creative Cloud, Android development tools, Java environment, and Unity. In addition, most of my favorite command line tools are there including C, C++, Python, Shell, and countless others. It truly is the best of both worlds AND it’s remarkably stable. That doesn’t even mention how lightweight a MacBook Pro is, it’s amazing battery life, or any of the other reasons I use a Mac. I don’t look back at the Windows world. While I often need to use Windows for development (Visual Studio projects, for example), I do so while sadly longing for my Mac.